Asia to see new monomer capacities in 2013

11-Jun-13

New monomer capacities are set to come online in Asia through the end of this year, as per ChemOrbis. ExxonMobil started up its new cracker at its Singapore petrochemical complex on Jurong Island at the end of May. Construction of the cracker, which has an ethylene capacity of 1 mln tpa, was completed at the end of 2012. China's Wuhan Petrochemical, owned by Sinopec, is planning to commission a new naphtha-fed steam cracker on June 28. The cracker, with an ethylene capacity of 800,000 tpa, will provide feedstock to a 120,000 tpa butadiene extraction unit. Meanwhile, the downstream units of the cracker including 300,000 tpa of LLDPE and 300,000 tpa of HDPE are expected to come online at the beginning of July. Taiwan's CPC is expected to start up its new No 6 steam cracker at Linyuan in the third quarter of this year. The cracker had initially been scheduled to come online in the second quarter but the date was delayed as the company is waiting to receive a license to proceed with the start up. The new unit has a capacity to produce 600,000 tpa of ethylene, 300,000 tpa of propylene and 100,000 tpa of butadiene. China's Tianjin Bohai Chemical Industry is expected to start up a new propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit with a propylene capacity of 750,000 tpa at the end of the year. The company is planning to start feeding propane into the unit by October. Market sources reported that Shaoxing Sanyuan Petrochemical is also on track to start up a PDH unit at Zhejiang in December 2013. The unit will have a capacity to produce around 450,000 tpa of propylene. According to ChemOrbis, Singapore's SP Chemicals is targeting to commission a new 320,000 tpa styrene plant in Jiangsu, China in the third quarter of this year. The company expects to conduct both test and commercial runs within the third quarter.